Varjo announces the addition of VR/XR cloud streaming to its Reality Cloud platform, with early access customers including EV manufacturer Rivian

In Virtual Reality and Mixed Reality News

January 19, 2022 – Varjo, a provider of professional-grade virtual and mixed reality (VR/MR) hardware and software, has today announced the addition of cloud streaming to its Varjo Reality Cloud platform, marking progress toward the company’s vision of bringing real-life collaboration into the metaverse.

With the new service, select early access users can deploy VR/MR applications and experiences entirely from the cloud for the first time and stream human-eye resolution extended reality (XR) content directly to Varjo headsets. The company states that this will help to unlock new levels of scalability and productivity as professionals look to expand their use of immersive workflows. 

“Being able to achieve the same quality experience through Varjo Reality Cloud with less powerful local PCs is a game-changer for companies looking to scale their use of virtual and mixed reality,” said Urho Konttori, founder and CTO of Varjo. “Now, with our new cloud streaming service, users can join photorealistic virtual experiences with almost any laptop with a dedicated NVIDIA GPU and a Varjo headset and start collaborating in an immersive environment.”

Varjo first announced its Reality Cloud platform in June last year. The platform allows professionals across a range of industries to move into immersive workflows by leveraging the compute power of the Varjo Reality Cloud, powered by Amazon Web Services (AWS) and NVIDIA GPUs. By streaming content directly from the cloud, local computing requirements are reduced, and the need to have supported software applications installed on every user’s local PC is diminished. Instead, users can simply put on any Varjo headset (XR-3, VR-3, or Aero) and use a link to join a cloud-hosted session to begin collaborating instantly across the globe. 

By utilizing Varjo’s proprietary foveated transport algorithm, users can stream immersive content from Varjo Reality Cloud to VR/XR devices with a bandwidth of only 35 megabits per second. Additionally, all the traffic between the local PC and the servers, including the stream itself, is encrypted and has been developed with industry best practices, according to Varjo.

Electric vehicle manufacturer Rivian is among one of the first of Varjo’s customers that has received early access to Varjo Reality Cloud to conduct automotive design reviews with Autodesk VRED software. Varjo states that it has been working closely with the Rivian, Autodesk VRED, and AWS teams to help transform the automaker’s design review process into a cloud-streamed, immersive workflow. 

With Varjo Reality Cloud, Rivian can now create collaborative VRED sessions on-demand and enable key decision-makers to join. More specifically, one user can create a cloud-hosted session running on Varjo Reality Cloud and send it to other users across geographies. Once users click on the session link and put on a Varjo headset, they can all see and collaborate on the same, high-resolution 3D car model through VRED without having to download it or install the application locally.  

“With Varjo Reality Cloud, we are able to make high-fidelity immersion a key part of our design development and scale it effectively across locations,” said Trevor Greene, Lead of Visualization Design at Rivian. “This is a turn-key solution that allows users with very different skill levels to be brought into an immersive environment to collaborate – something that hasn’t been possible before.”

Varjo Reality Cloud is still under development and only available to select existing Varjo customers in early access, with commercial availability expected during the first half of this year. Varjo states that it plans to extend its cloud streaming capability for other relevant software and workflows across industries throughout 2022.

To find out more about Varjo and its cloud streaming solutions for XR, please visit the company’s website.

Image / video credit: Varjo / Vimeo